Chapter 1

Ten years. That's how long I loved him. Now, I was leaving him to go marry the most powerful Don in the Cosa Nostra.

That night, I had just zipped up my suitcase when the penthouse door crashed open.

Jax stood in the foyer, yanking his tie loose.

He glanced at the suitcase. He just looked annoyed, like a boss who hated being interrupted.

"Haven't you made enough of a scene at the office?" He looked down at me. "Couldn't even wait for me to get off work. You had to run home and play runaway bride?"

I stood up and gave him a dead stare.

To him, I was always just "making a scene."

"Didn't Bianca give you my message?" I dropped the nice-girlfriend act.

That set him off.

"Alessia, you're being crazy! Why are you always so hostile to her? You mentored the girl. What are you trying to do, ruin her life?"

Hostile? Ruin her life?

I looked at the man raging in front of me to cover his own guilt. It was pathetic.

He didn't know I was the daughter of Sicily's most ruthless Godfather.

Years ago, I defied my Family. I refused to touch the blood money.

I came to North America with nothing, hid my last name, and swore to build my own empire on Wall Street.

Then I met Jax.

We pulled all-nighters reading financial reports in a shitty apartment, eating discount pizza, fighting the world back-to-back.

I used my Family's killer instinct for business to build him from the ground up. I made him Wall Street's golden boy.

And Bianca?

Just some waitress I bumped into at the café downstairs.

She spilled coffee that day and cried, shaking like a leaf.

Her eyes looked exactly like my cousin's back in Sicily.

In this cold city, so far from my family, that flicker of home was the one thing that broke through my defenses.

I did some digging. Ivy League, sure, but she was drowning in her family's gambling debts.

So I brought her into the firm.

I gave her a real job, planned her career, and even paid off her first debt collector out of my own pocket.

I thought I was saving a desperate girl.

I was wrong.

This helpless little thing had her eyes on Jax from day one.

Later, she spent all her energy at work trying to seduce the boss.

Just last week, she made a fatal mistake.

She leaked our base price on a multi-million dollar contract.

The boardroom was packed with execs and investors.

I went strictly by the book. I pointed out her mistake and told her to call Legal to fix it immediately.

I didn't even raise my voice.

But what did Bianca do?

Her eyes welled up. She looked at Jax like a scared little bird.

That was the first time Jax lost it in public.

"Shut up, Alessia!" He slammed his hands on the table and pointed right in my face.

The whole room went dead silent.

Everyone, even the investors, stared at him in shock.

Jax ignored the fact that the whole team was about to pull an all-nighter to fix her mess. He pulled Bianca behind him.

"It’s just a wrong file. Do you have to humiliate her in front of everyone?"

He looked at me with pure disgust. Like I was the monster.

Then he announced to the room: "From now on, Bianca is my head assistant. Anyone got a problem with that, get the hell out!"

He stood tall, chin up.

He was arrogant, stripping me of my power, high on the thrill of finally putting me in my place.

And Bianca, hiding behind him, looked up at him with pure worship.

Back to reality.

It suddenly hit me. Jax was sick of hearing "There is no Jax without Alessia."

He didn’t want an equal. He wanted a pet who would look up to him.

He was no longer the guy in that shitty apartment who told me, "You're the only one I'll ever surrender to."